


Xenopathology

by Owlship



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: "They" Pronouns for Venom Symbiote, (but he's trying okay), Animal Death (a symbiote's gotta eat), Fluff, Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Human Disaster Eddie Brock, Minor references to Cannibalism, Other, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 12:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17080715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: "Uh-huh," Eddie says. "Sounds like a cold, to me.""Sounds like you know nothing of symbiote biology," Venom snarks back.





	Xenopathology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fox (Spacefoxen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacefoxen/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Fox! I hope you enjoy this fic.

Eddie wakes up damp and slimy. It takes a few moments for this to register- mornings have never been a strong point for him- and a few moments more to decide that no, this isn't him being clammy with sweat from some kind of dream, nor is the apartment above his leaking (Not that these apartments have water piped into them, anyway. He hasn't lived in a place with such luxuries since that time goons from the LIFE Foundation busted in and tore up his first post-Anne apartment).

He stretches himself out and discovers that his sheets are also soaked with... whatever it is.

"Venom?" he asks blearily, because there's really only one other source that makes sense. He finally opens his eyes and discovers that not only is he damp, but he's also greenish-gray over his normal skin tone.

"Venom!" Eddie says more sharply. "Did you _drool_ on me while I was sleeping?"

There's a thin layer of slime covering his entire body, soaking into the sheets. It's _vile_ and he really, really hopes that the bathroom down the hall still has hot water so he can wash himself off properly.

" **No** ," Venom says, and doesn't offer any other explanation.

"Come on," Eddie says, hoisting himself off the mattress and into the narrow space between bed and wall. "The human body doesn't do this shit on its own."

But Venom says nothing else, a sullen knot of impressions at the base of his skull.

Eddie sighs and grabs his towel and soap, set on the idea of washing himself before he tackles the mess that is his bed. This shit better not have ruined anything, he thinks angrily as he stomps towards the bathroom that he shares with the rest of the floor.

He reaches it just as the door opens and one of his neighbors steps out, their eyebrows quickly raising at the sight of him before they visibly make the decision not to ask questions.

Eddie thinks about offering up some sort of explanation, but fuck it. He doesn't care what these people think of him.

The shower is tepid at best, but even the shitty water pressure still washes away the feeling of being covered in some sort of drying slime well enough.

As usual, Venom pokes their head out from under his skin to feel the water pour down, a viscous black tentacle with a tiny inhuman head that Eddie thinks some days he'll never get used to, and other days utterly forgets is unusual.

"But really," he says out loud, leaning away from the spray of the shower to soap up his hair. He should probably get it cut soon; it's starting to stick up in all sorts of weird ways, especially on windy days. Venom turns their head to look at him with narrowed eyes. "I'm pretty sure this one's on you, buddy. What's up- are you sick, or something?"

The silence here is telling. Eddie closes his eyes and leans back into the stream of water to rinse off his hair.

When he emerges again, Venom has retreated back inside of his body entirely. As if he needs the visual reminder to know that his symbiote is still there, perfectly able to hear.

"Are we talking common cold levels of sick, or do I need to try convincing Dan to do some labwork for us?" Eddie asks.

" **We don't get 'colds'** ," Venom says after a moment.

"Sure," he replies, "Explains why I _wasn't_ sick for a week in March." Eddie shuts off the water and starts toweling himself off, glad to see that the slime and the discoloration seems to be washed away.

"So that's a yes to talking to Dan?" he says, and picks up his still-soggy underwear off the bathroom floor with pinched fingers. He's reminded of an article he did ages ago on Mutants with mundane 'powers', and a girl he'd interviewed who had a trace of iridescent fish scales on her skin- and a slime coat to go along with it. She'd had the problem of slime getting all over everything she touched for too long, and wore entire outfits of special fabrics to combat the issue.

" **No** ," Venom says. " **We don't need Dan. Or any doctor**."

"Mhm," Eddie hums as he makes the trek back to his room, dismayed all over again at the sight of his soggy, slimy sheets. He puts on new underwear and waits for Venom to conjure up clothes for him to wear. And waits.

"Are we doing laundry in the nude, today?" he says.

Venom makes an attempt to form themselves into clothes, but gives up when the pseudo-fabric stretches and sloughs off for the third time as Eddie gathers up the soggy sheets into a ball to be taken to the laundromat a few doors down.

He can't help but feel concerned, now. "Sure you're okay?" he asks, and rummages around his dresser for the few sets of real clothes he still owns. It's handy, having a symbiote who can make themselves into nearly anything. Real fabric against his skin feels strange, now, as he pulls on a pair of jeans and threadbare t-shirt.

" **I am fine** ," Venom says, but even their voice isn't as firm as it usually is- or perhaps Eddie is just projecting what he would expect, if the other in his head were human.

"Okay," Eddie says. "Please don't make us slimy when we're in public today."

" **We won't be slimy** ," Venom says, voice primly offended.

He cracks a smile and leaves the apartment behind him, laptop bag slung over one shoulder and laundry bag over the other. The laundromat is close enough to the cafe next door that he can sneak their Wi-Fi, if he gets a seat in the right spot.

Keeping a blog is different than the real investigative reporting he's used to, but that's what Eddie's been reduced to. His name doesn't come up attached to the murders leading up to the showdown with Riot and Carlton thanks to a plea deal with the agency that oversees 'metahuman law' (And wasn't _that_ a trip, that he's included in the same ranks as real live superheroes now?), but he's still blacklisted in the journalism community.

"Fucking Carlton Drake," Eddie mutters to himself as he boots up his blog, the first load of laundry already tumbling away in the machine. He figures it'll take two, maybe three washes with extra soap before he feels comfortable sleeping on those sheets again- at this point, he might as well just buy new ones, he thinks, except he's too damn stubborn.

" **Write about us** ," Venom says, voice echoing from deep inside his own head.

"I wrote about us last week," Eddie points out. He has an entry planned already, a body found dumped behind a dumpster. No one had claimed the young woman, her body covered in more bruises than clothes.

" **Write about us again**!" his other says, and extends a tendril of black along Eddie's fingers, as if they're going to write for him.

"Hey, no," he says firmly, jerking his hand away from the laptop and shaking it out to dislodge Venom.

The old lady sitting in the chair across from him watches him with a wary expression, like she's waiting for him to launch himself at her.

" **Her brains would taste good** ," Venom says.

"Uh, no," Eddie says, and averts his gaze. He puts a hand up to his ear as if he has an earpiece in, like he's not really just talking to the voice in his head as he mutters, "We're not eating anyone who isn't very, _very_ bad, remember? Grandma here doesn't count."

He can feel Venom's pout from the inside. " **It's been a week since we ate anything living** ," they say.

Has it been so long? Eddie focuses his eyes on his laptop screen as he counts back. There was the mouse they caught in their apartment, but he figures Venom isn't counting that since it was barely a mouthful. Before that... Yeah, okay. It's been a week since there was a criminal bad enough for him to let Venom eat.

"I'll get us some nice sushi when we're done here," he says.

" **It's not the same** ," Venom says, still mentally pouting.

"You can do just fine with chocolate, don't think I don't know that," Eddie retorts. The buzzer on his load of laundry goes off and he tucks his laptop into his bag before getting up to change it. Once he wouldn't have thought twice about asking the person nearest him to watch it for a minute, but that was before he came to such a rough neighborhood, before he became one of the local crazies, one step away from living on the streets.

He flashes a smile at the old lady as he gets up, and she scowls at him.

" **Fuck her** ," Venom hisses.

"Pretty much," Eddie says, and busies himself with checking to see if the sheets need another go around in the wash, or if he can move them to the dryer. "What was that stuff made of, anyway?" he asks. There's still a darker, greenish stain in the middle of his sheets where his body was laying all night. Maybe if he splurges on one of the stain-removal soaps? It's cheaper to bring his own soap, but the dispensers can't be _all_ crap, surely.

" **Waste products** ," Venom says reluctantly. " **It's been rerouted**."

"Rerouted?" he says, pausing where he's mulling over the soap choices. Tide is twenty-five cents more expensive, but he's not sure it would do any more good than using Shout. Hell, he thinks as he glances back at his soggy, stained sheets, why doesn't he splurge and use them both.

" **You won't have noticed** ," Venom says, this time sounding proud. " **The human body is poorly designed**."

"Hey, that's _our_ body you're critiquing," Eddie says, and sets up the wash for another cycle. His seat's been taken in the meantime, a family with kids who definitely won't appreciate sitting next to a guy arguing with himself about eating heads. He has to use the bathroom, anyway.

After making sure that the washing-machine door is locked- not all the units do lock, though they're supposed to- he gathers up his laundry bag and heads for the cafe next door. A small black coffee is cheap enough, and it grants him access to their bathroom.

"Hey," Eddie says as the thought occurs to him while he's washing his hands afterwards, "This is why I've been peeing so much all day, isn't it? You're making me piss your slime away."

Venom stays suspiciously silent.

He sighs, and checks himself in the mirror by habit. Half the time Venom will show themselves when he does this, either as their conjoined form or else just a tendril with a head. Today there's only him in the mirror, deep shadows under his eyes and enough stubble that he's edging into 'scraggly beard' territory.

"You look like hell, Eddie," he says to himself.

" **Don't insult us** ," Venom says, and oozes slightly out from under the collar of his shirt, an oily black tendril with a grinning face.

"Just me, buddy," Eddie says, and strokes the tendril with a finger. Venom closes their eyes almost all the way, grin widening and tongue unfurling in happiness. Just like an animal getting petted, Eddie thinks to himself.

Venom doesn't take offense at this comparison- probably they're too focused on getting petted to care about the minutiae of what Eddie is thinking.

He leaves the bathroom and returns to the laundromat, this time sitting on the cement steps at the back of the place, leading to staff-only areas. Venom has yet to fully retreat, a comforting presence tucked just against his collarbone.

Eddie finishes up his blog article right as the sheets are done with their dryer cycle. There's still a vague discoloration on them, but he doesn't think any more washing is going to help.

Venom has been much quieter than usual during this process, only making a handful of comments. That, more than the slime thing (he's already had to pee again and this time he paid attention- it was _green_!) has Eddie worried.

"What's on the agenda today?" he asks as they return to their crappy apartment.

" **We should watch TV** ," Venom suggests. Eddie checks the time- they have a little over an hour left before he has to go to his shitty pet-store job, the one he only ended up getting because he was in there so often buying animals for Venom to munch on. It just hadn't made sense to turn down a source of income, even if he earns it by cleaning cages and selling animals to idiots who'll end up killing them one way or another.

"Sure," Eddie says, and pulls out his laptop again. He feels guilty about the fact that he doesn't subscribe to any actual services, just has some dodgy websites he can find videos on. "Wildlife?"

" **Show us the penguins again** ," Venom says, sounding perked up for pretty much the first time all day.

"You got it," he says, and navigates the links deftly- it's always harder than he expects to avoid porn on these sites, no matter how carefully he words his searches- before finding an episode of 'Planet Earth' that promises at least some penguins. He doesn't know why Venom likes them so much, but it's not like Eddie has any problems zoning out to the sounds of a wildlife narrator.

Venom extends themselves into an amorphous blob and wraps around Eddie, their version of a hug, before retreating to just a head puddling next to Eddie's own shoulders where he's lying on the still-bare mattress. Normally Venom looks a bit more put-together, but today they resemble half-melted jello.

Eddie curls his arm up until he can rest his hand against Venom's head, idly stroking the not-flesh there as they watch animals of various kinds living their lives.

" **I want to eat one** ," Venom says when a seal shows up on screen.

"Absolutely not," Eddie replies.

Venom hisses but doesn't argue further.

It's nice, lying on the bare mattress with his symbiote, watching nature documentaries. Eddie is starting to forget what it was like before Venom came along, before he had a presence in his mind and body and life that would never leave him. It's like no other relationship he's ever been in and the thought of Venom leaving him sends a shiver down his spine.

Venom snuggles a little more firmly against his hand, tongue sliding out to wrap around one of Eddie's fingers.

"Gross," he says, but doesn't move his hand away.

He watches a helpless animal on screen get eaten by another animal, bigger and more predatory, and wonders idly what he would do if Venom was really sick. Like, sick with something that he can't fix, or Dan can't fix. What if it's something on Earth itself that's making Venom ill?

" **Can feel you worrying** ," Venom says, eyes sliding away from the screen to fix on Eddie. And how can he tell what the symbiote is looking at, when there are no pupils to indicate a gaze?

"Sorry," Eddie replies, and makes an effort to scratch against Venom's not-quite-skin in the way they like. "Hey, this isn't... a 'War of the Worlds' situation, is it? You being sick?"

" **We already ended the war with your world** ," Venom says.

Eddie rolls his eyes, because he _knows_ Venom can pick up context clues from inside his skull if they bother to look. "Those aliens were all killed because of a bacteria from Earth," he says anyway. "Are we sure you're immune to everything?"

Venom puffs up, offended. " **I am not sick with some Earth germ** ," they say.

"Then what _are_ you sick with?" Eddie asks.

Venom seems to realize they've made a mistake and finally admitted to being sick. They deflate, more than half their mass retreating back inside Eddie's body. " **It's a minor inconvenience** ," they say.

"Uh-huh," Eddie says. "Sounds like a cold, to me."

" **Sounds like you know nothing of symbiote biology** ," Venom snarks back.

"Yeah, never pretended otherwise," he says with a nod. "Do you need anything in particular? Chicken-noodle soup, vitamin-C, things like that?"

" **No** ," Venom says, and then perks up their head. " **We require brains. And pancreases. Some livers, too**."

Eddie snorts and scritches his hands against the top of Venom's head. "Yeah, not falling for that one, buddy," he says.

Venom pouts and watches the rest of the nature documentary in silence.

Eddie watches with them, alternating between watching the show and watching his other. He can still feel that worry lingering in the back of his mind- _his_ mind, not the shared space he and Venom have built between them. He's never been very good at taking care of other people. He can't even manage to take care of himself most days without help, really.

When the documentary is over Venom slowly oozes back inside his body, and Eddie looks down at himself, the jeans and t-shirt he's wearing. Normally Venom forms whatever clothes he needs, work outfits included- he doesn't _own_ any actual work-appropriate clothes. Just the one good button-down and slacks, in case he somehow manages to get an interview somewhere he cares about, and like hell is he wearing those to scrape out animal cages.

"Think they'd believe me if I said it was a laundry mishap?" he says.

" **No** ," Venom shoots back, but there's no real heat in it.

Eddie rolls his eyes and locks up the apartment before going down the hall to piss green for the twentieth time that day. "I'm not sure if this is better or worse than getting a stuffy nose," he says contemplatively.

" **I can make that happen** ," Venom says, and Eddie shakes his head rapidly.

"No, no, at least I can ignore this most of the time," he says.

Damn, he thinks as he hits the streets outside the apartment building, he should have grabbed a jacket. It's chilly this time of year, especially when he can't wrap himself up in an extra-warm layer of symbiote.

Venom extends themselves as a thick tendril and wraps around his neck like a scarf, significantly cutting off the chill.

"Thanks, darling," Eddie says flippantly. With a grin Venom flicks their tongue out in reply, startling a nearby passerby. They don't use pet names very often, and never in a serious manner. Sometimes Eddie thinks about it, about what his relationship with Venom is like, and whether pet names for real might just fit in. It's an odd train of thought, one he usually only entertains if he gets drunk and lonely and Venom isn't being too big of an ass about the combination.

With a glance down at his scarf-mimicking symbiote he shakes his head, resolving not to think about it.

 

Work is... Eddie can't pretend to enjoy being back in retail. He thought he'd escaped that hellhole for good when he was a teenager. But it pays the bills, and he gets a discounted rate on any feeder animals he buys. The other workers are under the impression he has some sort of snake, possibly more than one, and he's done nothing to dissuade them of the idea.

Venom keeps him entertained, at least. Always snarking back- mentally, thankfully- at the customers that get on Eddie's nerves, offering to eat them (Eddie likes to pretend they're just joking), occasionally teasing at the animals by showing themselves when no one else is looking. Less so today, when they're still subdued with whatever alien version of a cold is ailing them, but still enough to make the tedious hours livable.

" **These look good** ," Venom says, drawing Eddie's attention away from where he's replacing the old litter of the rabbits' cage.

"What, the mice?" he asks. There's a dozen or so in the aquarium, some running around, others sleeping, two squabbling on and off. One is nursing a litter over in the bedding next to their plastic house, little naked pink beans that'll probably be snatched up over the next few days to feed snakes and whatnot.

" **Yes** ," Venom says, and extends a tendril to get closer to the cage, pressing almost up against the glass. The mice inside all whip their heads to their direction, normal activities stopped as they register the alien presence.

Eddie sighs, and tells his coworker Arnold that he'll need a half-dozen mice rung up before they close for the night.

"You need to bring that snake in someday," Arnold says as they deftly scoop up six squirming mice and place them into a cardboard box.

"Yeah, maybe," Eddie says, feeling Venom's amusement over already being right there as well as their annoyance at being mistaken for a snake.

" **We should go into work together, one day** ," Venom says.

"Nope," Eddie says as surreptitiously as he can. So far his coworkers are willing to ignore him when he mutters to himself, but it's a little hard carrying on two conversations at once. He can only imagine the fallout of showing up at work, a place where they know his real name, looking like Venom.

"You okay, man?" Arnold asks as he rings Eddie up. "You're looking a bit peaky."

"Think I'm coming down with something," Eddie says. He shrugs. "You know how it goes."

"That crud just keeps going around and around this store, I swear," Arnold says, and hands over the receipt. "Well, you're set. See you later!"

Eddie makes Venom wait until they're in the alleyway behind the pet store before letting them eat any of the mice. His symbiote other picks one up from the cardboard box delicately, like they're examining it for defects, before popping it whole and wriggling into their mouth.

Eddie is just glad they're reached an agreement on what things he's willing and not willing to put inside his own mouth. Venom eats two of the mice then and there, and then passes the box back to Eddie to carry home. Not eating everything in one go is something they're working on still; Eddie suspects that it's only because Venom is feeling under the weather that they aren't devouring the entire box of mice right now.

" **Home** ," Venom says, a command in their voice. It's dark out, the streetlamps in this part of town unreliable. Still not really dark enough to hide the presence of an alien tentacle growing out of his body, grinning teeth gleaming in the halogen glow.

"In a minute," Eddie says. "Gotta get food for me, too."

Venom licks over their teeth with their tongue and then oozes back under Eddie's skin, leaving just a faint trace of drool on the fabric of his shirt.

The bodega nearest their apartment isn't Mrs. Chen's, that's for sure, but it does the job. Eddie grabs a can of chicken-noodle soup and a carton of orange juice. He doubts that the home remedies will have any effect on Venom, and his other certainly won't appreciate their significance without being told, but his few domesting instincts all say he should give a sick person chicken-noodle soup and orange juice. Possibly tea, but he can't stand the stuff.

" **Chocolate** ," Venom demands.

"Yeah, yeah," Eddie says, as if he wasn't already planning on grabbing some. Normally he'd argue back, point out that Venom has four mice still left to eat, but they're sick. Sick people- and sick alien symbiotes- get pampered.

He grabs two bars off the shelf, the cheap stuff because Venom doesn't seem to care a bit about the quality.

The cashier here barely ever lifts their eyes up to even see who they're ringing out, and Eddie lets himself murmur to Venom that maybe they'll visit _this_ store together, some day.

" **Yes** ," Venom says, peeking out from under the collar of his shirt, slowly forming themselves into a facsimile of a scarf again. " **We should do that. And eat anyone who looks at us wrong**."

"No to the last part," Eddie says with a shake of his head.

"Huh?" the cashier asks, hesitating where they're about to bag up the last of his items.

"Nothing," Eddie says with a smile that they won't look up to see. "How much?"

 

He hates using the shared kitchen, avoids it as much as he can. Technically he's not allowed to have a hot plate in his room but- eh, he hasn't burned a place down yet thus far in his life. He dumps the contents of the soup can into his one pot and gives it a dubious stir with a spoon. Maybe he should have sprang for the better brand.

" **We should watch more television** ," Venom says.

"It's late," Eddie says. "I was gonna eat and go to bed."

It's better if Venom leaves the internet-navigating to him, especially after the porn pop-up fiasco of a few months ago. That doesn't mean they _will_ , just that there will probably be a mess for Eddie to clean up after he's awake in the morning.

" **We should watch together** ," Venom says with a pout in their voice.

Eddie feels real warmth build up inside of him, his mouth falling into a soft smile. "Okay," he says, and uses the hand not stirring his soup to rub over his chest, where he likes to imagine he can feel Venom curled up safe and sound. "Just for a little while, though."

He eats cross-legged on his half made bed, the stained sheets pulled haphazardly over the mattress. Between bites of soup he takes big swigs from the container of orange juice, the taste combination of the two bringing him back to the first time he was sick on his own, away from home and school. He'd been miserable, halfway convinced he was going to die right there on the couch and the only one who would notice would be his landlord, eventually.

Venom slowly moves to cover him, spreading out over his skin with cobwebbing tendrils, a million tiny points of connection between their very cells. Eddie keeps eating, used to the sensation by now even if it's usually a quicker process.

He shivers in relief as he's encased fully in his other, warm and protected from the outside world. It's nice to not be alone, even if Venom is sick with what Eddie really hopes is just a minor cold, and not anything more serious than that.

Together their vision is different from what he's used to; Venom's eyes don't process the same way as Eddie's do, and the combination results in a headache if he tries to examine the differences too closely. He pays it no mind this time, the way the individual pixels of the screen are more visible, how colors look more washed-out.

Eddie keeps eating his soup until the bowl is empty, despite how he can feel his other's disgust over the well-cooked meat in it. The orange juice goes down better, though he doesn't finish it off just yet, wanting it to wash out his mouth after what he knows is coming next.

"Your mice?" Eddie prompts, no sound actually escaping as he speaks. It was hard to get used to at first, how he could speak and yet make no noise, but the deeper he sinks into that middle state of symbiosis that's just _them_ the easier it gets.

Together they reach for the box, one of the corners nibbled into but not opened up enough for any of the mice to escape. Hopefully. Eddie doesn't want to be responsible for unleashing more mice into the building.

Venom takes front seat for this, gleefully tasting the mice with their long tongue as they squirm against their hold, ending their lives with quick snaps of their jaws or else- Eddie internally holds back a gag- just swallowing them whole and still wriggling.

The remaining four disappear one by one in this fashion while the computer drones on about the cycle of life in the background, and Venom lets out a dramatic " **Ahh** " of satisfaction.

Eddie lets them savor the moment for a few seconds and then swirls the rest of the orange juice around their mouth, trying not to remember the feel of fur and tiny claws in their throat.

Venom stays wrapped around him, entwined perfectly around his every cell, for a little over half the documentary before retreating again. They're tired, which is an odd thing to feel from a being that ordinarily never needs to sleep.

"Maybe we should call it a night," Eddie says, and yawns.

" **Not yet** ," Venom replies. They puddle out against the sheets, inky black highlighted by the glow of the computer screen.

"Well, I'm going to bed," Eddie decides. He takes a moment to queue up another few documentaries for Venom in hopes of minimizing their roaming through the seedier parts of the internet before pulling the sheets up around him.

"You can take my body to the bathroom if my bladder gets full," Eddie says around another yawn. "Don't need to wake me up."

Venom stays pooled at his feet where the laptop is but Eddie knows the message went through. Normally he wouldn't give Venom permission to use his body unsupervised, dislikes the disorientation and claustrophobia of feeling like a puppet, but it's Venom's fault that he needs to pee so much today. Venom can be the one to take care of it.

 

He wakes up pleasantly dry, which is a nice change from the day before. He also wakes up exhausted.

Eddie yawns and forces his eyes open, blinking in the bright light of midday. "How long did I sleep for?" he asks, groping around for his phone to check the time. The laptop is still at the foot of the bed, screen black.

It's just before noon, which means he's slept a good three hours later than his usual. He doesn't _feel_ rested, though, just tired.

"Why didn't you wake me?" he asks Venom.

" **We were resting** ," Venom says. Their voice sounds strange- if they weren't an essentially-bodiless alien who doesn't need sleep, Eddie would say they sound like they just woke up.

"Mhm, yeah," Eddie hums out. He stumbles out of bed and down the hall to pee- yep, still green. "Any clue how long this funk is supposed to last?"

" **We should stay in bed today** ," Venom says.

"That's not what I asked," Eddie mutters without any force behind the words as he shuts the door of their apartment behind him again. "You'd tell me if there's something I can do for you, right?"

" **Of course** ," Venom says. They extend a black tendril out of his skin to wrap around his midsection, but the touch is gone nearly as quickly as it came.

Eddie calls out of work. Says something vague about not feeling well and hangs up before they can start pressing him to come in anyway. It's not even a lie- he feels exhausted, limbs heavy and mind sluggish. Like he's the one who's sick and not his other.

Then he curls up back in bed and searches for his favorite sick-day movies, though he doesn't expect Venom will appreciate them much.

" **Thank you** ," Venom says when they're halfway through _The Princess Bride_.

"For what?" Eddie asks, suddenly aware of his fingers absently caressing the tendril that Venom has extended to watch the movie through their own senses.

" **We shouldn't miss work because I'm sick** ," they say with what sounds like a great deal of reluctance.

"Aw, no," Eddie says, not even lording it over the symbiote that they finally admitted out loud to being sick. "This is what partners do, you know? They take care of each other." He's thinking of the times Anne 'worked from home' to tend to him when he had food poisoning, the time he called out just so he could make sure she was okay that time she had a bad case of the flu. Maybe not _precisely_ the right analogy for when dealing with his other, but close enough.

Venom nestles a little closer to his side and says nothing, a sense of satisfaction radiating through the space between them.

Eddie dozes his way through the day, stopping their movie marathon only to use the bathroom and get more food from the corner store. Lots of chocolate, because he doesn't feel like going to the closest Chinatown market with living livestock and like hell is he going to let Venom out to pick off bad guys in this state (Visiting the pet shop he works at is, obviously, off limits unless he wants to be put to work). Lots of orange juice, too, because it occurs to him to worry if _he_ might also be getting sick, and that the both of them down for the count is just too disastrous to contemplate.

"Any idea how long this is gonna last?" Eddie asks after the credits for _Forrest Gump_ start. It's late in the afternoon now, nearly time for him to try sleeping for real again.

" **Another day** ," Venom says, still sounding reluctant to part with the information. " **Maybe two. It is not so different from one of your human 'colds'**."

"Alright," Eddie says easily. That's not so bad, he figures, and kindly doesn't tease Venom about finally admitting that they have a cold. "Just don't let us get slimy again, alright? I'll handle the rest."

Venom oozes a little closer to him again, this time wrapping a tendril around his wrist.

Eddie smiles down at them and cradles their mass with one hand, the other navigating through the forest of links to find another movie to watch. They stay like that, wrapped up in each other, until Eddie drops off into sleep for real without meaning to.


End file.
